Harry Connick Jr. + Australian Blackface = Eracism

You probably already saw this clip since it was everywhere yesterday, and I promise never to ever be on an airplane again* so that you do not have to suffer the indignity of seeing something posted a few hours later than it was posted on some other websites. But on the slight chance that you did not see this clip yesterday, you are about to see it, and for that I suppose I am also sorry. Because it’s a terrible clip! Harry Connick Jr. was a guest judge on an Australian variety show called Hey Hey It’s Saturday, and a group of doctors calling themselves the Jackson Jive came out and performed a horrifying blackface Michael Jackson tribute. Yikes. To make matters worse: the audience LOOOOOVES it. Fosters may be Australian for beer, but blackface is Australian for thing everyone loves so much apparently. Afterward, the host of the show, Daryl Somers, brought Harry Connick Jr. out to apologize. All of this after the jump.

Oh, Australia. With your Apocalyptic dust storms, prison colony roots, and fiercely guarded love of blackface. Probably the weirdest part of this whole thing is the apology. Because what is the host apologizing for? Offending Harry Connick Jr.? Yes. Finally, the long rift between the Australian variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday and Harry Connick Jr. has been repaired! So many generations of people prayed that they would one day see Hey Hey It’s Saturday living in harmony with Harry Connick Jr. but so few expected to see it in their own life times. Amistad.

According to FabLife, the Australian public reaction has been that Harry Connick Jr. was being too politically correct. Which is hilarious. Because Harry Connick Jr. was not so much being too politically correct as he was being exactly the right amount of regular correct. Also known as “classic correct.” I mean, even if blackface has a longer history of racial insensitivity in the United States, it still seems pretty obvious why that would be offensive everywhere. Right? Am I just so entrenched in my American puritanism that I’m incapable of seeing how a bunch of white people painting their faces with shoe-polish and doing a choreographed monkey dance is just gentle comedy all in good fun? Back me up, Japan!Japan? (Via MovieLine.)

As an Aussie, I can say from experience that blackface really doesn’t have the same connotations here – it simply doesn’t have a history, and that’s why people who don’t understand it’s background might call it an overreaction. Their ignorance doesn’t make it any better though.

That’s not the sick part. The sick part is this show used to be on years ago, got taken off the air and has actually come back on Australian TV and this is exactly the kind of skits they had back in the 80s. I can’t believe my favourite website just merged with my least favourite television show and created vomit in my mouth.

I think it might be gentle comedy all in good fun. Considering that minstrel shows, the dominate form which Americans associate with blackface, were primarily meant to ridicule black people in general and were a singularly American entertainment genre, it is natural that we are prone to interpret any use of blackface as offensive and insulting. It strikes me that in other cultures, even those as similar to ours as Australia, with it’s own racial issues, the use of blackface could be seen as merely a form of costume. Especially in the context of a specific parody of a known entertainment property like the Jackson Five. Certainly a part of the parody is racial, and it is indelicate to be sure, but to a less racially sensitive audience, there is no reason to assume it is more inherently offensive than any other broad stereotype-based comedy, including those we would be less likely to be outraged by. Just thinking out loud here.

Firstly – this is terrible.
Secondly – I’m pretty sure Australia doesn’t have the history of blackface that americans do. (as an Australian, I’m very sure… we did different terrible things to our indigenous popn and different things again to our immigrant population)
Thirdly – That isn’t an excuse.
Fourthly – Neither is the old “I’m Indian, so I can’t be racist” excuse.
Fifthly – It was extremely offensive (not just to americans or HCJnr, who Daryl Summers directed that amazing apology to), but I’m hesitant to call it racist, as I’m reluctant to ascribe a motivation to the act (maybe I’m being too nice here)
Sixthly – call it what you want, I think we should all pause to consider the number of brain-snaps required to get a cock-up of this magnitude onto the air
Seventhly – Hey Hey makes Australia’s Funniest Home Videos look like Chekhov, so don’t judge us all by the people who watch it/defend blackface.
Eighthly – there’s a reason this shit’s been off the air for 10 years
Ninthly – THEY’RE DOCTORS! The guy in whiteface is a plastic surgeon.

Scratch that, turns out the skit WAS the exact same one they had on 20 years ago. Same guys. Only this time they went up against Harry Connick Jr and the fact they’re all doctors now don’t mean nuthin to Harry.

1. the fact that the routine made it to air at all.
2.Being disgusted at the ‘apology’, host Daryl Somers offered, which assumed that Australians wouldn’t be offended by a minstrel act on national television in 2009.
3. And finally, the international media’s handling of the subject – making blanket statements and assumptions that the majority of Australians are racist and weren’t offended by the act rather than focusing on the real issue at hand – our archaic media institutions who actually thought this would be a good segment to go to air.

I can only hope that this will result in HEY HEY ITS SATURDAY! not getting greenlit for a full series. because then I may have to expatriate.

Argh, this whole thing basically makes me want to curl up in a ball and die from embarrassment. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that public reaction has been totally “racist? whatever!”, because I know my reaction when I heard the next day was the correct one, namely “racist!”, same with my friends, but I do know from a lot of comments on websites that a lot of people disagree with me. I think there is some degree of truth to what the person who commented earlier said, that we don’t have as MUCH of a history with blackface as say America, but that’s a bullshit excuse regardless because no country exists in a vacuum, there is no way that this isn’t offensive just because certain things didn’t happen here. Plenty of other horrible things happened / continue to happen here, enough so that a MAJOR TV NETWORK should have known this wasn’t cool.

The only other thing I will say is that it’s completely unfair to assume 20 million people all felt the same was about a really controversial thing, just for the sake of an easy joke.

Can we get SNL to do a skit with Honkeys dressed up like Aborigines? With big, broad, fake noses and didgereedoos? Eating kangaroos? Oh wait, SNL isn’t very funny since 1980. GABE CALL JENNY SLATE PRONTO. Like now. THE REBIRTH IS NOW.

If this site were Australia, would Tosh.0 be a troupe of blackface performers? If so, can I be Harry Connick, Jr.? And can we pretend this analogy isn’t somehow fundamentally flawed? Because I know there’s a point in here somewhere.

honestly i can’t believe anyone is using the whole “we don’t have a history of blackface” bullshit as an excuse for this.. regardless of our own shitty history with our black indigenous populace you don’t have to have personally engaged in something yourself previously to know it’s probably going to be pretty fucking offensive to someone else.. i think putting on blackface and acting like a moron kind of ticks all the boxes..

sorry world.. i did not think we were that bad as a nation but apparently we’re out to prove me wrong

I have to say, other countries just don’t understand how this plays with Americans. I would think Australians would be a little more aware since they have the whole thing with their aboriginal folks but hey.

When I lived in Czech Republic I saw a guy in black face singing as Louis Armstrong in the main square in the middle of town for a big international folk festival. I was mortified and started looking around for black people getting ready to riot. But there aren’t any black people in Czech Republic. They don’t mean anything by it and they don’t see what the big deal is. My friends thought I was being weird when I kept saying how wrong it was.

i kinda wish the term “politically correct” never existed because it just gives ignorant folks an excuse to point fingers at a person who is trying to respect another person’s cultural differences. it’s really easy to say that someone is being “too politically correct” when you’re not part or close to the group of people that’s the butt of everyone’s jokes.

In a town in northern England, not so far from where i grew, up there’s a troupe of ‘morris dancers’ that use to use black face. They’ve done it since the heavy mining times hundreds of years ago. This might explain it a little you might think. Though. They’re called ‘The Britania Coco-nutters’. I kid you not.

I’m Australian and I am cringing from embarrassment about this. That as far as the rest of the world is concerned we all appreciate a blackface musical number on primetime TV in 2009.

It was in bad taste and it was racist. Here is the quickest way to tell why – because people are offended by it. It is a shocking display of how out-of-touch either network execs are in Australia to think it makes for good viewing, or the shameful state of the Australian general public to prove those same execs right based on the shows popularity. Either way I am astounded and disappointed by it.

This was a lame skit from an equally lame show, its the equivalent to Jay Leno making a joke about our Aboriginal stolen generation:-
1. it would piss off a lot of Australians
2. it would mean little to none to Americans
3. Americans would get pissed off that Australians thought they were insensitive assholes because of Jay Leno’s gaping mouth.

So in summary how about we just get over it? Shit happens and theres wankers in every country. FIN.

I haven’t really been following this because, well, ugh. Ever since Sommers started his insane mutterings about how the nation NEEDS “Hey Hey” back, I’ve been living in a perpetual state of ugh. “Hey Hey” was never the good timey wholesome pure hearted beacon of family entertainment that Sommers has retrospectively been trying to cast it as. It was crude, racist, sexist and homophobic 20 years ago and I guess nothing much has changed. I’m guessing because nothing could entice me to actually watch either of the specials. But anyway, where is the baying for blood a la the furore over The Chaser’s Make a Realistic Wish sketch? Is this the lesson we are actually taking away from this? Black humour doesn’t fly but blackface does? Oh man, I fear for the fate of Saffran’s new show.

“Now just throw your hands in the motherfuckin air
And wave the motherfuckers like ya just don’t care
Yeah roll up the dank, and pour the drank
And watch your step (why?) cuz Doggy’s on the gank
My bank roll’s on swoll
My shit’s on hit, legit, now I’m on parole, stroll
with the Dogg Pound right behind me
and up in yo bitch, is where ya might find me
Layin that, playin that G Thang
She want the nigga with the biggest nuts, and guess what?
He is I, and I am him, slim with the tilted brim
What’s my motherfuckin name?”

Oh America, land of the culturally superior and politically correct! Thank goodness your most sparkling orator, a mouthpiece for a nation of equality and social justice, chastised those backward Australian mannerisms. Thank you Gabe, your insightful nationalist diatribe has penetrated the facade of puerile humour to locate the true problem here: Australians. It is only right that a representative for a nation with such discreet international policies and peaceful ambitions should be appalled by the barbarism displayed by these reckless displays of liberty and corporatism.

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